Above is a screenshot from CSS Beauty. I visit this site often for news and inspiration. It has great industry related information and ideas wrapped in a clean sharp design but built into a surprisingly unorthodox layout. Here’s the same screenshot, with the relevant content highlighted.

That is only about 10% of the visible page; the other 90% is navigation, advertisements and branding. The small allotment of space for the page content would still work and have not made me think, if it was placed using expected conventions: at the upper left or centered within the white content field.

This design appears thought through, so I expect there was a rational behind this layout choice, I just have yet to discern it. I am just glad to finally recognize it, for the longest time, I would click a link on CSS Beauty and have to wonder whether it bothered to load the page, because I didn’t know to look below the ads to find the new fresh content.

I like the idea of promotion at the storefront to increase awareness and visibility, such as the food court stands at the mall that have an employee offering free samples. That is smart promotion.

What KB Toys did this morning was not smart. They placed an employee in a SpongeBob suit at the front of the store waving at the crowd, along with a handler doing double-duty of giving out the newspaper flyer with promotional information.

This overarching issue was that they were not necessary. It was Black Friday morning, which means dedicated shoppers working things off their lists, including toys. These shoppers did not need to be cultivated. They were coming for the toys, they just needed to get in.

SpongeBob and the handler were standing directly in the threshold to the store, cutting off half the entryway. The foot traffic was forced to merge into two narrow lanes on either side of them, creating large backups of people trying to both enter and exit the store.

I never watch TV in real time anymore, that’s why I have TiVo. And if TiVo glitches and forgets to record a show, as it did with Prison Break this week, now, thanks to cross-media syndication, I can just go online.

Prison Break is on Fox, who syndicates on MySpace. I was concerned I would have to suffer through yet another horrendous MySpace experience to see the show. To my surprise, Fox has done right with its Prison Break page/site/player. The viewer was nearly full-screen and played in high resolution. Commercial breaks were minimal, and there was no skipping or dithering. Overall a very positive experience and a great new backup plan.

The Baseball writer’s did right by giving the MVP to Ryan Howard. Howard had better numbers than anyone else in the game last year. Plus, as Ryan Howard streaked so did the fightin’ Phils. His tear through the second half of the season directly correlates with the Phillies playoff push. Albert Pujols made it a close race, but no matter how you look at it, Howard’s regular season was superior, and he deserved the award.

We would like to thank the Philadelphia Eagles for participating in the 2006 NFL season. You are welcome to pick up your “We weren’t already losing games we should have won, now we can hide behind this injury” tee-shirts as you leave the stadium.

This could be so much worse. If the Eagles were 8-1, as they should have been, then this injury would be catastrophic. As it was, the Eagles were having trouble getting the easy wins, and were riding the line between “about to turn it on” and “about to be eliminated”. The coach was on the hot seat the fans were struggling to stay confident. Now, all that is washed away. The season is a wash, and the best thing the Eagles fans can do now is root for the Redskins to get some wins, and give up the cellar, so the Eagles can get a better pick and an easier road for next year.

Back in 1994 everyone knew that Mac was making the superior computer, but they took their eyes off what was important, like distribution, and were unable to meet demand. The company took a significant hit from that setback that took years and many iHardwares to come back from. In retrospect, you still need to scratch your head asking “how did they miss that?”

Fast-forward to the present, and Apple has let go of Justin Long, the “Hello, I’m a Mac” guy from the commercials. They will not say as much but it appears they realized that the commercials are smart yet funny, very well done, and enjoyable to watch, with one caveat: as Seth Stevenson, ad critic for Slate put it, the Mac guy comes off as a “smug little twit”.

Once again, I’m forced to ask of Apple, “How did they miss that?”

One of the best AJAXian features I have seen is on the Google (or is it Yahoo) change password page. When you type in your intended password, it displays beside the input a color coded bar that will critique your creativity. This tool will read your password as you enter it and hand down judgment ranging from “Poor” in the red to, well truthfully I’m not sure the terminology used in the green.

Yet, while I continually choose middle-of-the-road yellow passwords, I can rest easy knowing that the choices I am selecting are definitively not on the list of the 10 Most Common Passwords. These 10 choices make up 1.8% of all passwords used online. That is staggering!

Being in the midst of wedding planning and house-hunting, both here in the DC area, the world often feels very expensive. The Global Rich List, which I was sent a few times today, is a great reminder that there are plenty of people in the world (90-some percent) that have it harder than I, and most seem to be able to find ways to live, raise families, support loved ones and be happy. It’s important to keep mindful of the big picture.

The other thing I thought of when spending a few minutes at the Global Rich List was that I was spending a few minutes at a charitable donation site. Development is an exceedingly difficult field. People typically are reluctant to part from their hard-earned money and turn it over to an organization that supports the greater good. The traditional approach is to market the greatness of that good, how valuable this organization and their work is. This pitch is so commonplace we don’t even pay it any mind.

So, what did Global Rich List do differently? They didn’t open by selling you an organization, a cure, a solution or even a need. They opened by reminding you that you have a lot of hard-earned money. By ranking you among the richest 10% of the world, they have praised you, and caught your interest. That’s when they start baiting the hook. While are you looking at the chart affirming their assessment that you are stinkin’ rich, is when they remind you just how far $5 can go on the other side of the world. And that is when you donate, because they’ve convinced you that you can.

Visit for yourself, the Global Rich List, a brilliantly crafted development campaign.

This is Robleto.com 5.0, the fifth major overhaul of my website all about me. Each previous redesign updated the look and feel of the site, and improved the code underneath. This latest addresses goes even deeper, addressing the purpose of the site and how to handle outdated content.

Previously, Robleto.com delved into numerous personal topics including who I am, my interests in theatre and travel and what books I recommend. These areas of the site, while providing a strong reflection of my identity, all too frequently fell into decline from lack of updating and made the entire site feel abandoned

In trying to rectify this situation, I asked myself which areas on the site (or the web) that I do actively keep up-to-date. I found three:

• My Blog - What you are reading right now, driven by Blogger (for now).The focus has changed from personal to referential to profession, but it has been kept updated on average once a week for the past four years.
• My Links - In order to be able to reference links at home or at work, I have abandoned browser Favorites/Bookmarks and cite any site that is of interest to me by tagging it to del.icio.us.
• My Photos - Having recently gone Pro, I am actively growing my Flickr account as my primary source of displaying and organizing all of my photos and images.

So, when I committed to a redesign, I decided to focus solely on these areas. I have removed the static pieces of Robleto.com that were never updated and seldom viewed, and radically simplified the site. It is now only three pages: my blog, my photos and my links.

This choice is a complete shift in the approach to this site. It veers away from the previous brochure style which literally stated who I am and what I like spun whatever way I chose, in favor of this new approach. This site, as you see it today, doesn’t really state anything extensive about me directly, but by aggregating content that I actively keep up-to-date, it should paint a pretty good picture of who I am and what’s important to me.

Enjoy!

If you are in the industry, you know about Web 2.0, but you may ask yourself, “Am I really applying the practices of this new movement. Sure I make a bottom reflection to my logos and write titles really really really big, but could I be doing something more?”

Yes you can.

Have you included a blogroll, tapped into the Google API, or referenced “Less is More”, “VC”, “The Long Tail” or Dave Legg? Have you incorporated both AJAX and prototype into your XHTML 1.1 strict website?

I didn’t think so.

Fortunately, the boys over at 30 Second Rule, have set the bar for all the Web 2.0 designers with this easy to use Web 2.0 validator. Use it often to check to make sure you are keeping up-to-date and in touch.